Sudan President: non-Muslims will have no rights under sharia constitution

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President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Saturday Sudan’s next constitution would be “100 percent Islamic” to set an example for neighboring countries, some of which have seen religious parties gain power after popular uprisings.

The secession of mostly non-Muslim South Sudan a year ago sparked predictions that Sudan, which hosted former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, would start implementing Islamic law more strictly.

In a speech to leaders of the mystical Islamic Sufi tradition in Khartoum, Bashir suggested Sudan’s new, post-secession constitution could help guide the region’s political transformation.

“We want to present a constitution that serves as a template to those around us. And our template is clear, a 100 percent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western (influences),” said Bashir.

“And we tell non-Muslims, nothing will preserve your rights except for Islamic sharia because it is just,” he said.

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Abortion backers assault more pro-lifers in recent violent assaults

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In recent days we have reported on the assault of a pro-life protester (caught on video and followed by arrest) and the vandalization of a pro-life leader’s home.

Here are two more attacks by abortion supporters against pro-lifers to report.

The first occurred June 30 and is in follow-up to my story that pro-life activists planned to distribute flyers outing country singer JoDell Nauert as the owner of three abortion clinics at an Independence Day gig.

This was ironically a charity event for a group supporting handicapped children and adults.

Six pro-lifers paid to enter the event and were in the process of distributing tracts when organizers asked them to leave, which they did.

But one of those pro-lifers, Steve Kinn (above right) is a disabled veteran who walks with a cane due to injuries sustained to both his knees. When he didn’t exit fast enough, the property owner allegedly shoved him, making him fall to the ground and reinjure one of his reconstructed knees to the extent he had to be taken out in an ambulance.

It was of no help that a police officer threatened to arrest Kinn for trespassing both before and after he reached the hospital.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: tobyjmarks

Young Girl Convinces “Seventeen” to Quit Photoshopping Body Shapes

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A 14-year-old Maine ballet dancer who led a crusade against altered photos in Seventeen magazine now has a promise from top editor Ann Shoket to leave body shapes alone, reserving Photoshop for the stray hair, clothing wrinkle, errant bra strap or zit.

And when Shoket or her staff do manipulate images, she vowed in the August issue, they’ll post before and after shots on the magazine’s Tumblr page for full transparency.

Shoket’s promises are included in a “body peace treaty” that also commits the magazine to always feature healthy girls and models regardless of clothing size.

The young activist, Julia Bluhm, said Friday from her summer camp she’s “really excited.”

“I didn’t think it would get this big,” she said. “It’s a really great surprise for me.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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GOP holds ‘super-Saturday’ blitz in battleground states

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Thousands of Republican volunteers braved scorching temperatures to knock on doors and canvass voters on Saturday as the party staged its first “Super Saturday” blitz hoping to energize supporters and rival Democrats’ volunteer mobilization.

Republican party officials said volunteers were out in a dozen battleground states expected to see close contests in the November 6 election between Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Obama captured all 12 – Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa – when he won the White House in 2008, aided by armies of enthusiastic supporters who helped generate the highest voter turnout in 40 years.

Romney will need to swing a number of them back to the Republican column to defeat Obama this year. Drumming up voter enthusiasm could be a key, especially given polls showing Democrats are more enthusiastic about the 2012 contest than Republicans.

“There’s nothing to substitute for face-to-face, eye-to-eye contact,” former Virginia Governor George Allen told volunteers in Fairfax, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Transparency Ends at the White House Door

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On his first day in office, President Obama vowed to create “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens.” But the president has not lived up to his transparency rhetoric – and now even the left is taking note.

Liberal magazine Mother Jones laments this week that the Obama administration spent a record-high $12 billion in 2011 to keep government information classified. Since the process of classifying documents is itself classified, it’s impossible to determine the individual merits of those decisions. But it’s instructive to consider the government’s sweeping classification mandate with Obama’s initial pledge that transparency would be one of the “touchstones” of his administration. As he said back in January 2009:

The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, that it should not be disclosed. That era is now over.

Except, plainly, it’s not. And it’s not just the “American people” who are being denied access to government-related information. The president’s cheerleaders in the establishment media have been similarly rebuffed. In June, that frustration led Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times – hardly a right-wing tribune — to blast the administration for its hostility to media coverage and its tightfisted control over information, especially on national security. Abramson revealed that Times reporters who had covered national security issues for several decades had confided in her that “the environment has never been tougher or information harder to dislodge. One Times reporter told me, ‘The environment in Washington has never been more hostile to reporting.’” So much for a new era of accountability.

Obama’s broken promises on transparency are also evident in the administration’s aggressive pursuit of leakers, on whom journalists rely for scoops and inside information. That may seem unlikely, particularly in light of the recent spate of national security leaks from the administration. But those leaks, highlighting the administration’s national security successes — such as the drone program and the foiling of a terror plot through an audacious undercover operation — have largely served to bolster the administration’s public image. By contrast, the administration has come down hard on leakers it sees as damaging to its cause. In its first term, the administration has launched six prosecutions involving such whistleblowers – double the number under all previous administrations combined. Although most of these whistleblowers have leaked information to the media rather than to a foreign government, it speaks to the severity of the administration’s position on leaks that it has gone after them under the 1917 Espionage Act. The message is clear: Transparency ends at the White House door.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Common parasite may lead women to suicide, self-harm

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Women who are infected with a common parasite may be more likely to hurt themselves or attempt suicide, a new study of over 45,000 new moms in Denmark suggests.

The infection, known as toxoplasmosis, is caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Humans can become chronically infected by eating undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables or by handling cat litter, as the parasite is known to multiply in the gut of infected cats.

Toxoplasmosis is often symptom-free, but can be dangerous in people with weak immune systems or during pregnancy, since the parasite may be passed to babies.

Some studies have linked the parasite to a higher chance of developing schizophrenia, and researchers believe because the T. gondii parasite lives in the brain, it could have an effect on emotions and behavior.

For the new report, Dr. Teodor Postolache from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and his colleagues used Danish medical registries to track 45,788 women who were originally included in a study that screened newborn babies for toxoplasmosis.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Thomas Sowell, W. Williams: Public schools bigger threat to blacks than KKK

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Thursday on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, fill-in host Walter E. Williams, a professor at George Mason University, and Hoover Institution scholar in residence Thomas Sowell, author of “Intellectuals and Society: Revised and Expanded Edition,” discussed public education and how it impacts the black community.

Sowell said Americans need to honestly answer some tough questions blacks and the public school system. “It’s very hard to take sometimes, but it has to be done,” he said.

“Wherever blacks or anybody else wants to go in life, they can’t only get there from where they are, which means they have to know where they are — not where they wish they were or for other people to think they are, but where they are in fact. The truth is absolutely the key to any hope of advancement.”

Williams likened that public education system to the Ku Klux Klan.

“I’ve said that, Tom, that if I were the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and I wanted to sabotage any opportunity for black academic excellence, I could not think of a better means for doing so than the public education establishment in most of our cities,” Williams said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Video: Larry Pratt hammers Obama for trying to violate Constitution with UN Gun Control Treaty

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Larry Pratt hammers the Obama Administration’s attempt to foist the unconstitutional UN Arms Control Treaty on the American people.

Photo credit: Gage Skimore

Nugent: “Never Trust a Man in a Black Robe; He Might be Naked Under There”

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Yogi Berra said that when you come to a fork in the road, take it. When supposed-conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. came to a judicial conservative-liberal fork in the road, he veered left.

With Chief Justice Roberts‘ vote to save Obamacare, I was reminded of what my dad told me more than 50 years ago: Never trust a man who wears a black robe. He might be naked under there.

Unlike other conservatives, I don’t care if his vote to save Obamacare turns into a cash cow for the Mitt Romney’s presidential political machine and galvanizes the GOP. There are some things more important than politics and elections. Striking down un-American, Constitution-violating Obamacare is one of them.

Had Chief Justice Roberts voted along with Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia like everyone expected, Obamacare would have been struck down by the Supreme Court. That would have put even more wind in the sails of the Romney campaign.

The bottom line is that Chief Justice Roberts‘ traitor vote will ensure more monumental spending and wasted taxes and put almost 15 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) under one of the world’s most bureaucratic, ineffective, incompetent and grossly expensive systems ever devised by man: our out-of- control federal government.

Read more from this story HERE

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Obama administration “blatantly circumventing” Tenn.’s Planned Parenthood funding ban

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Pro-lifers are calling foul at Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen’s announcement that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Grants Management has given Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region $395,000 through its Title X Family Planning Services Program.

According to Cohen’s office, Title X is the only federal grant program with the lone mission of funding family planning services.

“Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region has been helping Memphis and Shelby County residents get the health care they need to lead happier, healthier lives for years,” Cohen said in a statement. “These new federal funds will help ensure the Title X Family Planning Program reaches those who need help the most in underserved communities.”

Pro-life groups say that the Obama administration is blatantly circumventing the state’s 2011 decision to defund Planned Parenthood.

“While we are disappointed that any tax funding would be directed to private organizations promoting and profiting from the killing of unborn children, this end run around the people of Tennessee will serve to underscore the urgent need to elect a pro-life president, Senate and Congress in November,” said Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit:  Fibonacci Blue